Sandvoss says he didn’t take immediately to the story; he had trouble “buying” the stormy love story between the solemn missionary and superficial party boy, but after a few reads and meetings with the producer and director, he says he became a believer.
To prepare for the role, Sandvoss invited some Mormon missionaries to his home to watch them in action. “I didn’t tell them, we’re doing a movie about how your faith abuses people. I just sort of listened and watched.” But ultimately, Sandvoss says, becoming Elder Aaron Davis wasn’t too much of a stretch.
“He’s a sort of idealistic and naive 18-year-old kid. It’s not that hard to remember what that was like. Harvard people have that bipolar, idealistic-slash-skeptical character, so it pretty much fit.”
When it came time to shoot, Sandvoss was joined by fellow rookie Ramsey as well as a troupe of more established names like Mary Kay Place, Jacqueline Bisset and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He says the director’s style allowed actors enough space to make their own decisions.
“It can be kind of detrimental to plan too much, to dig out the channels where your emotions are supposed to go and then force yourself into them,” he muses. “It’s much better to go in understanding where you’re going and what the scene’s about, and then do anything you want.”
And, he adds, “We shot on digital, so I didn’t have to worry about how expensive the film was. I could fuck it up ten times and it wouldn’t matter.”
The director intentionally saved the harder scenes for a few weeks into the process, once some sort of bond of trust had been established. Of course, “harder scenes” meant the sweat-sprayed sex scene, which was shot the same day as a chest-puffing basketball scene.
“That whole day we were just cracking jokes to break the ice about how in a few hours we were going to be mostly naked and writhing around,” remembers Sandvoss.
Sandvoss says he considered it a miracle he’d been cast at all, so he was ready to jump into the film without boundaries. “I thought, if I hold back at all, or if I’m scared that I’ll never work again because I played a gay character, if I’m scared that people from college will think I’m gay, then it’ll show and I’ll never work again because I’ll suck. So I’d better just get over what issues I have and just do it. And I did.”
In Sandvoss’s hands, the character’s lack of eloquence, part deliberate and part a function of the script’s weak points, becomes transformed into stumbling sweetness. And despite choppy pacing, awkwardly campy dialogue and a soundtrack that imposes emotional cues with all the subtlety of a tank, there’s plainly something there: genuine chemistry between Sandvoss and Ramsey, some sense that when they finally crumple in each other’s arms, it’s all for something much better than Hollywood-style inevitability.
-—Staff writer Irin Carmon can be reached at carmon@fas.harvard.edu.